Do you read e-books to your kids?

Given the soaring sales of the iPad, Kindle, Nook and book apps, is anyone still reading books made of paper to their kids?

There are some obvious advantages to the e-book, iBook and app versions of books. Some are available for free download, and even the ones you have to pay for can be significantly cheaper than those made from dead trees. Enhanced ones include interactive components, games and audio, so they can read the story to your kids when you can’t. Some offer musical soundtracks and dazzling special effects.

Then there are the green and convenience factors. You can load up a thin e-reader with thousands of digital books, while taking even a handful of hardcovers, paperpacks or board books in a backpack or diaper bag or even lugging them to the back seat can be a weighty, bulky endeavor. For kids sharing a bedroom, big brother can read on a backlit e-reader when the light is off and little brother is sleeping.

The publishers don’t release a digital version of every title (children’s e-books still represent only 5 percent of the market), but they are putting out e-versions of a lot of classics, such as “Curious George” and the Dr. Seuss books. “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” which I loved as a kid and enthusiastically shared with my kids, is a top-selling book app right now. The book is about the glories of imagination: Harold can create anything with his purple crayon — the moon, stars, policemen, skyscrapers. And when he gets lost, all he has to do is draw his window around the moon, because he knows that’s the view from his bed, so he’s home.

I tried out the “Harold” app on iPad and found kids can swipe a finger across the sky and little purple stars appear — the kind Harold draws. And when you “turn” the page and find something Harold has drawn in gray, you can trace it with your finger and it turns purple. I found the experience fun and addictive, but is it better or worse than the old-school way of reading that book? Will kids tire of the gimmick, as they do with a talking toy that repeats the same phrases? Are they more engaged or less? Is it still a celebration of imagination, or is it now a rote response to a prescribed stimulus: Swipe here, see stars.

For decades, parents have sought educational toys for toddlers that would improve motor skills, response time, pattern recognition — things that would help prepare kids for kindergarten, all through colorful play. Now even very young kids can navigate a computer tablet or smartphone to play games or access stories, often ones featuring beloved cartoon characters such as SpongeBob or Dora the Explorer. Is this technological innovation promoting reading, or is the experience more like a videogame?

A big draw for parents, I imagine, is being able to occupy kids and stave off boredom, especially in the car, on a train or plane, or stuck in doctor’s waiting room. I try to always remember to bring a book or magazine with me when I’m headed for a long line, but the other day when I was waiting endlessly for a prescription at Kaiser and had forgotten to bring printed matter, I passed the time playing the “Angry Birds” app that my daughter had downloaded on my smartphone. If I’d had my Kindle with me, I could have read half of “War and Peace.”

But I wonder, if your kids are reading books on a digital platform, is it reducing the time you spend reading to your kids the old-fashioned way, with the kid on your lap or tucked into your side, turning the pages and snuggling and hearing your voice? Or do you both snuggle up with your iPad? Does having digital devices increase the amount of reading your kids do overall, because they use them in addition to all the traditional reading moments with parents, siblings and solo?

Please clue us in: What’s the state of children’s book reading at your house? Are you still reading mostly hardcovers and paperback books you can hold in your hand, discover on a shelf at the library or in the children’s corner of a bookstore, or are you downloading books from Amazon or the App Store on iTunes that you read on a screen? Do your kids like both traditional and digital formats equally or prefer one over the other? At what age did your child start reading books on an e-reader or tablet? Are you ready to go all digital to save money on individual books and choose a greener alternative? Or will you continue to buy books with paper pages for your kids? Just wondering …

REGAN MCMAHON is the Oakland parent of a high school girl and a college boy, and book editor of CommonSenseMedia.org.